Friday, January 4, 2013

why messy and wonderful?

Our littlest wonderful mess maker.

My blog name needed to change for quite some time now. Adoption has changed our lives in more ways than one and I’m really not in my “world surrounded by
men” anymore. I have been deliberately
hiding from my blog for many reasons, but the change and overhaul was one of
them.

Joya's adjustment into our family has been a moving target of what we might be dealing with next. With each new challenge, we wonder if it is caused by the trauma of adoption or if it is merely a part of her two year-old life. Should we handle it by doing "A" or "B" and which one won't traumatize her even more??? It's been messy.

But, when she counts off each family member by name every morning and reaches her arms out with a smile several times a day with the words, " I HOOOLLLD MAMA!" - wonderful doesn't even begin to describe it. When we watch our fifth child take up skiing just like the other four have, with squeals of joy and a desire to go faster, our hearts overflow with how wonderful and worthwhile all of the mess is.

Tonight's dinner was breakfast burritos, served one at a time because
our house was a complex machine of people coming and going tonight. My meal prep and service was messy tonight.

But when they sat down to eat it, everyone loved dinner, and
that is wonderful.

Our boys spent their coveted Christmas break passing the flu
from one brother to the next, not coordinating well enough to all get through
it at the same time. We looked like a
sick mess, but they all loved to snuggle close and watch lots of DVDs, day
after day, and that was wonderful.

Down and out over Christmas break

The sickness was only compounded by the fact that our 40
year old furnace finally leaned too closely to, “Hey I might just leak enough
carbon monoxide in the night to kill you all,” so we made the executive
decision to shut it off and live without heat until we could get a new one
installed. We must install it in a new
location in the house in order to actually conform to building codes. This all happened while our outside temps in
this mountain ski town dipped down to negative numbers. Warm blankets and cold noses!!!

So now, we have walls ripped apart and floor plans being
drawn for an unexpected and expensive project.
We are wearing fleeces and running space heaters. There is a layer of messy construction dust
almost everywhere I turn.

But soon it will be done.
We’ll be warm. We have saved
money for the unexpected, and it will be wonderful.

Our house is constantly noisy and it is never completely
picked up. By the time we finally update
the outdated avocado green carpeting and 1970’s bathrooms in our house, the
“new” kitchen we remodeled nearly six years ago will be outdated.

The papers on my desk scream, “PAY ME! FILE ME!
READ ME!”

Parenting our brood is a nearly humorous trial and error
experiment cycle as we weigh and measure each child’s needs, temperament, good
and bad deeds, love language, and hormone level. Then we try to match all that adequately
against our best prayerful guess of what is needed AND muster the energy to execute
the plan.

My head hits the pillow at night yearning for a couple of
extra hours to supernaturally sneak in to my REM cycle, yet the 6:30 a.m. alarm
always feels too soon and too painful.
But during those hours, I’m wonderfully intertwined with My Beloved, who
I love and respect more each day that I know him.

We snooze when we can.

All that leads up to the fact that when I showed My Beloved
my short list of truly inspiring and (I thought) fitting titles, it lead to a
discussion about naming my blog something that reflects ME. Not my kids, husband, passions, job, or
interests.

So I asked him, who knows me best of all: “Who do you say I
am then?”

He paused, looked down at the floor, then shrugged and
sighed and said, “Messy and wonderful,” to which we both broke out into whole-hearted
laughter.

To revisit in another post is the fact that ten years ago,
that comment would have hurt my feelings and had me personally offended for
being called messy.

2 comments:

You continue to amaze me, My Sweet Wonderful Messy Darling!! You can at least blame the messy on me and the genes you inherited from me. And maybe add some procrastination into the mix! I can't wait for your new blog postings! Your family is amazing every day and I love you all and wish I could be with you more often. Please tell all five that Grandma loves them every day and wishes that I could put jellybeans in each of their palms every day!!!

The pictures, the words, your life... it really does sound messy (or just busy?) and truly wonderful. Happy for how your family is gelling together with each passing month. Blessings to you, wonderful mama!

About Me

Messy and wonderful perfectly describes my life as a wife and mom of five. I'm passionate about advocating for orphans by telling their stories and encouraging adoption and orphan care. My schedule is messy and wonderful as I am charged with four sons and one daughter. We love living in our little mountain ski town. We do a little camping, a little skiing, a little hunting, and a lot of laughing and loving. Life is dirty and loud around here but we wouldn't want it any other way. Okay, maybe a little less dirty!